It was George Harrison’s birthday recently, February 25, to be exact. I‘d hoped to publish this blog about him then, but as computer break down’s go, my computer just stopped me in my tracks from doing so. I’m back on line now, and I’d better make this fast just in case old faithful decides to wander off again in search of something or someone to break down over.

George, you will always be my favorite Beatle. I wish you were still around to offer more words and lyrics that ring of the sixties, and that speak the truth about those unseen worlds, always so alive and ever present ‘within you and without you.’

Happy belated birthday George. Sending you beautiful Piscean dreams to say thank you for letting us in to your heart.

“And I’d like to hold you in my arms and have you any time…”George Harrison/Bob Dylan (Bridge)

Let me in here, I know I’ve been here
Let me into your heart
Let me know you, let me show you
Let me roll it to you
Let me say it, let me play it
Let me lay it on you
Let me know you, let me show you
Let me grow upon you

All I have is yours
All you see is mine
And I’m glad to hold you in my arms
I’d have you anytime
Let me in here, I know I’ve been here
Let me into your heart

There! I’ve reproduced the lyrics of a song written mostly by the late, but to me, still very alive, George Harrison, along with the living Bob Dylan, who contributed the bridge. Right up front I need to say that George Harrison is, and always will be my favorite Beatle.

When I opened my eyes this morning at 5:45 AM, all at once I was back in The Sixties. The welcome, haunting sounds of George’s guitar coupled with the lyrical language of his undying love, had taken up welcomed space in between my ears. What a spiritual, sexy, guitar George Harrison played. And those lyrics!

“Let me in here. I know I’ve been here.”
It seems as if he’s pulled to something terribly compelling and familiar in and about the other?

“All I have is yours. All you see I mine.”
Bob Dylan offers a declaration and promise of sacrifice, telling George between the lines, to give everything!

“And I’d like to hold you in my arms and have you anytime.”
That’s what George wants. He lays it right out, says it straight.

These lyrics speak to me of recognition of an experience of something or someone the singer has known before. A prior life?
A prior love? A prior dream? He senses the potential for ecstasy. He wants it, whether once again, or for the first time. No matter. He wants it, And, he wants it with her!

“Let me know you. Let me show you. Let me grow upon you.”
He’s trying everything to be seen, to be heard, to be held, to attach, to share, to merge, with taste and decorum, while at the same time waiting, holding, and containing…. time. He lays it out and then, in spite of his eager certainty, vows to wait patiently

“Let me know you.”
Ah, we might have guessed. The origin of his desire is now rooted in the biblical!

“Let me show you.”
He asks her permission to demonstrate his affection!

“Let me grow upon you.”
Having covered all the bases, he expresses his need in the most subtle of ways, in order to show her that he’ll take his time and that he can wait.

“Let me into your heart.”
Oops! Well maybe he’s not so patient after all.
He goes for it, takes a straight shot, asks for the whole tamale! He’s anxious to share what’s there, what he already feels. He wants/needs what has happened for him on the inside to be made concrete. Does he have a knowing and/or a hoping that the “thought”(s) of her “heart” and of his, will one day meet again, to embrace and literally merge? Does he perhaps sense and understand, somewhere within him, that it has been the images of their love that have helped his heart to survive her absence?

Or, as the late Archetypal Psychologist, James Hillman, has noted, “the thought of the heart is the thought of images. ”(1) Images of psyche (or soul) are often considered and experienced imaginally, i.e.(non-literally). I for one, am greedy. In fact one might even say, bi-imaginal. I like and take my images, both ways: as ocular literalisms and /or as psyche’s imaginal paintings!

And, what about any psychological projection that might be at work within the one singing these plaintive phrases, i.e. Harrison? Is he blindly unafraid, maybe even stupidly so? Perhaps, but that doesn’t seem to be the issue. Or if it is, it does not deter him. After all, when the imaginal fires of love, projection and transference are turned up, how many of us easily stand around when in the throes of a strong attraction, worrying about any danger that might lie beneath our desires? Of course we should pay attention to the warnings and/or other signs of delusional love, but must the magic be sacrificed in order to do so? George, seems unwilling to go there. He’s wrapped in blind faith, and the kind of mind-altering trust so prevalent and characteristic of the sixties. Everyone loved everyone then. No questions asked. Love coupled with the experience of enlightenment was the formula for ecstasy. Everyone wanted it! After all, George of all people, knew, believed, and wrote that the “lord,” was “sweet.” He was “within you” and “without you,” while both keeping and giving away everything he had in the bargain, all at the same time! With those alleged conditions of fair exchange, how can one lose?

I choose to believe that our singer, the late and much beloved, George Harrison, senses that something he needs deeply awaits there within the familiar chambers inside “the other’s” heart. He’s not afraid of the cost of that shared exploration. In fact, he covets and longs for it.

Since it is my predisposition to engage with those heavenly, mythical, astrological archetypes, so fondly referred to by me, as images of soul, I dug up George Harrison’s horoscope and took another look. I have his time of birth, but I’m not one hundred percent certain of its legitimacy. In which case, I turned instead, to one or two of the planetary, archetypal configurations or complexes, within his star wheel that symbolically described his desire for and description of, the ideal woman. I found his deeply erotic Scorpio Moon beautifully configured with his romantic Piscean Sun, with both easily, luckily, engaged with that great, big benefic (well most of the time) planet Jupiter. All three members of this ever–so- spiritual Beatle George’s archetypal astrological family– the Sun, Moon and Jupiter–were contained in a romantic, triangular, watery bath. If you take this astronomically arranged, archetypal love and beauty complex known as Venus/Aphrodite and place her in enchanting opposition to the romantic, spiritualized, planet Poseidon/ Neptune, aka higher octave image of Venus, you have the ultimate, spiritualized ideal of woman otherwise known as a Goddess. Did someone just scream out “Jung’s Anima?”

Given this star-driven parade of ideal, feminine perfection and beauty, so well-represented and carried by and within the archetypal configurations of George’s horoscope, it makes perfect sense to imagine him standing in the doorway of his beloved’s life repeating these musical laments and phrases, all the while growing more and more desperate and pleading, “let me in here. I know I’ve been here.”

The following is the image of soul, that I cooked up after a prolonged period of reflection upon the above described astrological configuration involving George’s perception of the women in his life and his impact, or not, upon them.

A man returns home at last, after a long journey away from his ideal and idealized woman. He fears he might no longer be or seem terribly familiar to her. Despite his anxiety, insecurity and in part fantasy-based needs, his hungry heart has remained open, faithful, trusting, unafraid.

Here several significant questions arise: Given George’s imagined internal astropsychological reality (otherwise known and characterized by me at this moment in time by the above image of soul) gleaned from, and related to, my impressions of the archetypal configurations and issues so alive in George Harrison’s horoscope, how can he not be consumed with doubt, hope and questions when contemplating the momentary capture of his ideal woman? Did she ever love him? Does she really exist, and if so, does she, will she, love him again? The aforementioned image of soul, addresses these current concerns. At another time, that same image of soul, may in fact apply to other circumstances. The point is, astropsychological images of soul, are like mini-stories, tiny vignettes, that appear to me as meditations, as I analyze and perceive a horoscope. They are powerful, rich gifts of psyche, affording life-long themes, or, as James Hillman has noted in his outstanding work, they are bits and pieces of Healing Fiction (2), like scenes from a dream, (my words) that act to deepen the interpretation of the archetypal astrological complexes within the analysis of a birth horoscope.

With these intriguing vignettes, archetypal astrology cannot help but become fiction, which, when considered with its mythological underpinnings, it already is! In this way, one enters their own story, with the option of writing it onward.

But as they say, I digress! So back to our lovely Beatle! George is now more than ready to embark upon this longed-for literal and spiritual exploration. My astrological image of soul, related to the struggle in the song’s lyrics, describes what I see as one of the core issues surrounding the mysterious, romantic, goddess-like, spiritualized imagery of women in George Harrison’s life and horoscope.

All this from the opening of a door that let in sounds from the sixties, and from which I was moved to again explore music and lyrics filled with the conjectures of my titillated and perhaps
overwrought imagination! I know, The Sixties were a long, long time ago. Yet, some part of me still lives there and always will. Bringing the rejuvenated essence of that time, into the present, still works. Especially, when I listen again to the music of that era, with what I hope is now the gift of deeper psychological awareness.

I must confess. I stand with George and his weeping guitar on this one. And so given that resonance, I make this request:
“C’mere! ‘Let me lay it on you’…”

Judith Harte
December 13, 2014

James Hillman, The Thought of the Heart
Pg, 2
Copyright 1981
Ascona, Switzerland